Flu Season
by December21st
Summary: Flu season has been rough this year, but it's not the apocalypse. Not enough people have died.


"Flu Season"

By December21st

Fandom: Castle

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Castle/Beckett

Warnings: General spoilers through Seasons 1 & 2. Apocafic with character and population deaths. Implied sex.

Summary: Flu season has been rough this year, but it's not the apocalypse. Not enough people have died.

Beckett comes into the apartment, locking all three deadbolts behind her. These days, it's better to be safe.

"Hey. How was your day?" Castle calls from his office. He's stopped shadowing her at work. Instead, he stays home, working on his next novel.

"Rotten. Man killed his wife. Left her body in a dumpster."

"Why'd he do it?"

"He said she looked sick." Beckett's voice breaks. Castle hears the frustration in her voice, saves his work, and comes out into the living room. Beckett's slumped in a chair, still wearing her coat. She has a surgical mask in her hands – nobody goes out in public without wearing one – and is looking at it like it's to blame for everything. Hers is plain, although designer patterns are gaining in popularity.

Castle's by her side now, wrapping his arms around her. It's the only way he knows he can help her, by reminding her that not all human contact is a threat. "Was she? Sick?"

Beckett shrugs. "The body was cremated right away. He's pleading self-defense."

It's the same story every day. All bodies are cremated before anything more than the most rudimentary post-mortems are performed. Some might be contagious, a danger to any who come in contact with them, but most are just victims of people too scared or too stupid to understand how disease is spread, or opportunists who use the current unrest to do whatever they want.

Beckett's a homicide detective, so it's not like she hasn't seen the same motives time and time again, but now it seems more raw, like more people have lost whatever thin veneer of civility they had. And it's getting worse.

She buries her face in Rick's shoulder for a moment, brushes his lips with her own, and gets up to divest herself of her coat. As always, it helps just to have someone to come home to. Kate can't imagine what this would be like if she were still living alone.

Alexis comes tromping down the stairs, making more noise than really necessary. Kate suspects that the teen is giving the two of them enough time to not be caught doing something really embarrassing.

"Hey, Kate," Alexis greets Beckett cheerfully. Kate has asked Alexis not to ask how her day was. Alexis doesn't need to know. She probably has some idea – Alexis is far from ignorant about the current situation – but she doesn't need to know details from the trenches.

The reverse, however, does not hold true. "How was school today?"

"Laggy," the teenager responds, wrinkling her nose. She's attending her senior year completely online. All of the private schools are doing it this year. The public schools are doing what they can. Ever since the incident with the classroom of third-graders, the doors of every school and college in the country have been closed. Nobody wants a repeat of that particular tragedy.

"Mr. Tupitsky tends to drone as it is, and when there are ten-second pauses every twenty words or so, it's unbearable. I don't think I know any more about the War of the Roses now than I did this morning," Alexis tells them, pouring herself a glass of juice.

"Sounds like a thorny problem," her father tells her, all mock seriousness.

"And …" she continues, rolling her eyes at him, "Mrs. Birnbaum was teaching in bunny slippers today. I don't think she knew we could see them, but I was texting with Jessica, and we both could.

"Passing notes in class?" Kate teases her.

"Just a little," Alexis admits. "You won't tell my dad, will you?"

"Right here," Castle objects.

"It'll be our secret," Kate smiles at her. Castle looks back and forth between the two, an exaggerated pout on his lips.

"Absolutely not fair, ganging up on me like that."

"Whoever said life is fair?" Beckett responds. She doesn't see the worried look that Rick and Alexis exchange.

Castle and Alexis went shopping earlier in the day. There's not a store in New York that takes cash anymore; it's all debit or credit. Restaurants aren't doing well, but grocery stores, especially those with self-serve checkout lanes, are thriving. Alexis likes going to the little mini-mart half a block away, run by Chinese family. They'll special order just about anything.

Alexis chases the two of them out of the kitchen so that she can make dinner (pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, garlic asparagus). Beckett wants to watch the news, but first the remote gets lost, then the TV mysteriously keeps turning itself off, and then Rick remembers that the news was cancelled for tonight because nothing happened today. Kate finally gives up after the last outlandish story and wanders off to change clothes.

After Kate's gone, Alexis passes the remote control back to her father, who carefully wedges it between the seat cushions. "Is it bad today?" Alex asks softly, not wanting to be overheard.

"I think today was worse than most," he confides in her. "We just need to distract her from the world a little more than usual. Don't let her watch the news. Make sure she eats all her dinner."

Alexis nods. She remembers when Kate first came to live with them, emotionally withdrawn and borderline malnourished because she hadn't been eating properly. Alexis may not be able to do much about the world's troubles, but she's not going to let that happen again.

Martha calls during dinner. She's still living with Chet, although Chet's newly widowed son is living with them too. She's gotten involved in pay-per-view theater. People aren't going to movie theaters or stage plays much, but the made-for-TV and Internet streaming business is booming, and Martha's proved herself to be surprisingly adaptable.

Alexis has managed to start a discussion with Beckett over the dishes about Jane Austen books; and whether Emma's near-complete failure as a matchmaker means that her own marriage is doomed, but the conversation eventually peters out and leaves the three of them sitting in the living room, Castle doing a crossword puzzle and randomly asking questions that only occasionally seem related to the puzzle, and Alexis sometimes relaying the questions via text to her friend Jessica. Beckett's sitting by the window, staring idly through the window at the city by night.

Alexis makes a decision. "So, Jessica and I are going to watch a movie together," she announces.

"I don't think it's really …" her father starts.

"No, not together-together. We're going to get on our cell phones and coordinate pay-per-view and talk to each other throughout the movie. It'll be fun!" she lies, staring at her father and hoping he gets the hint. At least Beckett's turned away from the window to look at them.

"What movie?" Nope, Dad didn't get the hint.

"Uh …." Alexis stalls, trying to think of something completely unappealing. "The latest Lindsey Lohan movie. I forget what it's called. You probably wouldn't like it. Maybe you two should do something else," she tells her father pointedly. She gives him a look that he better interpret correctly, because she really doesn't want to get any more specific.

"Right!" Castle finally catches on. He bounds over to where Beckett's sitting, scoops her up in his arms despite her vocal objections, and strides out of the room, calling "night, honey" over his shoulder as Beckett grips him around the neck to keep from falling. Somewhere between the living room and the bedroom, Kate's objections have turned into laughter.

The idea's actually not bad, so Alexis does spend the rest of the evening watching (and deconstructing) a movie with Jessica, although Lindsey Lohan's not in it.

Kate wakes later that night, Rick spooned up against her back, his arm draped over her side and unconsciously holding her tightly against him. He always sleeps like that, possessively, a drowning man holding on to a life preserver. Sometimes she wonders who's saving whom. It took a while to get used to, but now she can't get to sleep if he's not there. Anytime he stays up until three o'clock writing, she stays up until three o'clock waiting for him to come to bed.

Kate untangles herself from limbs and sheets, finds a robe, and makes her way out to the kitchen for a glass of water. Alexis has nodded off on the sofa, her hand still wrapped around her cell phone. Kate gently nudges the teen awake.

"Hey, you're up," Alexis tells her groggily. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine, Alexis," Kate responds,a wisp of a smile crossing her face. "You and your dad take such good care of me, I'm just fine."

Alexis looks momentarily guilty. She wasn't sure if Beckett knew what Alexis and her dad were doing. "We just … it's not fair," she objects, risking another observation on the fairness of life. "I barely know anyone who died from the pandemic. Just a few kids at school, but I didn't even know them very well. Mom and Dad and Grams and my friends, they're all fine. But first you lost your friend Lanie, and then your and dad's friend Detective Ryan, and then your father … and I would be so scared, but you still go into work every day and catch murderers and put them in jail. You should be allowed to go on vacation or leave or something for a year with everything you've been through."

Kate looks thoughtful, and chooses her words carefully. "It's like this. Every criminal that I catch, everyone I put behind bars, that makes the city safer for everyone. I can't do anything about the pandemic, but I can do something about the people who think it's okay to kill other people. So I do it for the people of New York, but I also do it for you and your dad. Even though I couldn't save Lanie or Ryan or my parents, you're just a little bit safer tonight because I did my job. Sometimes doing my job means I see the worst in people, and they make it hard to want to help them. But then I come home and you guys try so hard to make my world a better place, it makes it worth it to go to work the next day. In a way, I'm saving you out there, and you're saving me in here."

Alexis listens to the speech intently. It's obviously something Kate's been thinking about for a while. She stands and hugs Kate tightly.

"I love you," Alexis tells Kate Beckett, her voice filled with admiration. Then the teenager walks away from the woman she will from now on think of as family, and goes to bed feeling safe.


End file.
